[this original article was published in May 2005 and updated with notes recently]
When you send an email newsletter, you expect it to get to the reader. But many things – SPAM filters, changed emails addresses, email domain changes – can cause the email to bounce. How you handle enewsletter bounces is today’s topic.

Bounced email can be either a hard or a soft bounce. Hard bounces mean the address is invalid and the email server rejected the message, while soft means that there was some problem in handling. Some new email systems with SPAM blockers can also bounce an email. You should encourage your readers to put you on their whitelist if they are using a SPAM blocker system.

How bad a problem is bounced enewsletters? Mailermailer in a recent article said bounce rates average 6.5 percent. Depending on your readership demographics rates could be as high as 30 per cent if you have a group that turns over email addresses quickly such as college students. Also SPAM blocking from major ISPs result in email newsletters not getting through. Rates with

Most enewsletter programs have some method of bounce management. Many programs can detect a “soft” bounce such as inability to connect with the host email server and try again later. Some will also automatically remove unsubscribes from the list. But most will require the list manager to take some action to clean the list or remove subscribers. Part of the problem is that there are literally thousands of different bounce codes, and even at a single ISP, bounce codes may vary in meaning. In fact, bounce codes are often purposefully misleading to thwart spammers.

Listserv, the prototype for most modern systems, in its bounce management gives you the codes and then after three bounces allows you to send a probe to check an email box or send a verification message. Modern email programs either have a process based on the bounce code or flag the email address for action by the list manager in the cleanup process. Be careful with lists managers that say they automatically handle bounces and give you little indication of how they do it. You may be losing subscribers needlessly.

The difference for most bounce manager programs is that you want the software to record the bounce and keeping trying if it is a soft bounce or signal for removal if it is a hard bounce. This means that before each newsletter is dispatched you need to clean the list.

Cleaning the list

Cleaning the list means that you have to remove some hard-won readers email addresses. You must clean the list before each issue is sent. If your list program annotates delete requests, but does not remove them from the master list, it is vital that you clean the list before each new edition is sent out. If you fail to purge the requested deletes, you effectively are spamming those readers after they requested to be deleted from your list. Not a good practice. So clean the list before sending the latest edition of your enewsletter.

Cleaning the list may also show you other error conditions like an ISP changing to SPAM blocking. If all you emails to a certain domain hard bounce, then the ISP has likely implemented a SPAM policy that bounces commercial or duplicate emails that are not on customer whitelists. These are efforts to remove SPAM, so you should be active with your readership by asking them to store your address in their address book or place your address in their whitelist.

Cleaning may also indicate basic problems with individual accounts that you can correct to remove the bounce condition.

For more than you ever wanted to know on SPAM checkers go to Chris Lang’s site at http://www.keywebdata.com/ .[Spam filter information is now at http://www.emaildeliveryjedi.com/avoid-spam-filters.php ]